ARISTOCRATIC ACRES
A journey along the Great West Way takes the traveller past some of England’s most spectacular palaces and historic houses Words: Diana Woolf
BOWOOD HOUSE & GARDENS, WILTSHIRE
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here are over 30 National Trust properties alone along the Great West Way route. Many we have already mentioned, such as Cliveden, Mompesson House, Montacute House and Runnymede, the site of the sealing of the Magna Carta, to name but a few. Almost before you leave London, you pass the royal palaces at Kew, Hampton Court and Windsor Castle, the oldest occupied castle in the world. Then further west, as the countryside opens up and the landscape is scattered with an array of stately homes, two further castles, Highclere and Berkeley. Many of these properties are still owned by the aristocratic families who first built them. We hope you feel inspired by our selection of those you must visit.
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GreatWestWay.co.uk
Bowood House, famed for its gardens, is owned by the Marquis of Lansdowne. Be enchanted by the herbaceous borders and the Italianate terrace gardens with their formal beds and fountains, and don’t miss the 30-acre Woodland Walk, with massed beds of rhododendrons. The park at Bowood designed by ‘Capability’ Brown is another highlight, featuring expanses of lawn and picturesque groups of trees sweeping down to a gently curving artificial lake, it is a quintessentially English landscape. Inside the house, which is open to the public from 30 March – 3 November 2019, there is an unusual stately home laboratory. This is because it was here that Joseph Priestley, while working as the family tutor, discovered oxygen in 1774. You can visit the state rooms, library and chapel as well as the Orangery designed by Robert Adam in the 1760s, and the room he originally created as a small zoo which is now a sculpture gallery.
